n the long drive to the prison, Winona rehearsed what she would say to Dallas. I’m here on behalf of your son. You do remember—Idiot. Don’t bait him, she admonished herself.

I’m here on behalf of your son. He wants to petition the courts to test the DNA found at the crime scene. Surely, if you weren’t there that night, you’ll want to do the same thing.

She glanced down at her watch when she pulled up to the prison. It was one forty-five. If everything went well, she would be back at Mark’s house in time for dinner.

She drove up to the guard tower and gave her name into the speaker beside her window. While waiting for approval, she looked out over the forbidding gray stone, chain-link fence, and razor-wire world of the prison. She could see the armed guard in the tower, and as she drove through the gates and into the parking area, she couldn’t suppress a shudder of apprehension. The gate clanged shut behind her.

She forced a straightness into her spine, surprised by how frightening it was to simply visit here. How had Vivi Ann done it every Saturday for years?

She entered the administration building and was immediately struck by the noise. Although there weren’t a lot of people around, the walls vibrated with sound. The place seemed at once both eerily empty and bizarrely crowded.

At the desk, she signed in, got an ID badge, stowed her purse and coat in the locker room, and went through the metal detector.

“Usually lawyers request a private meeting with their clients,” the guard commented as he led her down the corridor. The echoing din grew louder. “You new?”

“This meeting won’t take that long.”

At last he came to a door and opened it.

Winona walked slowly into the room, feeling acutely conspicuous in her expensive wool pantsuit. Taking an empty seat, she stared through the fingerprint-smudged Plexiglas, afraid to touch anything. She could hear snippets of conversation going on around her, but nothing was really distinct. All up and down the row, people were pressing hands to the fake glass, trying impossibly to connect, to touch.

Finally the door opened and Dallas was there, in his baggy orange jumpsuit and his worn flip-flops. His hair was longer now, well past his shoulders, and his face had hollowed out. The darkness of his skin had paled somewhat; still, there was a frightening intensity about him, a barely checked energy that made her think he could come through this flimsy Plexiglas barrier and grab her by the throat.

He picked up the phone, said, “Is Vivi Ann okay?”

“She’s fine.”

“Noah?”

She heard the emotion in his voice; saw a vulnerability in his gray eyes. “Noah’s fine. In fact, he’s the reason I’m here. Sit down.”

“Say something worth sitting down for.”

“I’m here on behalf of your son. He wants to petition the court—”

Dallas threw down the receiver so hard it cracked against the Plexiglas. Then he turned and walked away. The guard opened the door for him, and without looking back, he disappeared into the buzzing, thudding growl of prison life.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Winona muttered. She sat there a long time, staring at the smudged glass, waiting for him to return.

Finally, a woman came up to her, touched her shoulder, and asked if she was waiting to see a prisoner.

“I guess not,” she said, scooting her chair back.

When Aunt Winona got home from the prison, I was waiting for her on her front step. It was raining hard and I was totally soaked, but I didn’t care. I saw her drive up and get out of her car and walk up the path.

She was by the dorky mermaid fountain when she saw me standing there in the rain.

I’m sorry she said.

I asked what he said, what excuses he gave, and Aunt Winona said he wouldn’t even talk to her about it. She said, I told him what you wanted and he just got up and walked out.

It made me want to scream or cry or punch someone, but I knew what a waste all of that was. So I thanked her for trying and walked home.

By the time I got to our house, the rain was falling so hard I sucked in water when I breathed. I opened the front door and saw my mom. She was sitting on the coffee table, trying to look cool, but I could tell that she was worried. She got up and came toward me, saying something about my wet clothes.

All I got out was the word Dad and like a total zero, I started to cry.

She hugged me and said It’s okay a bunch of times like she used to, but I know It’s a lie. I miss my dad, I said, even tho I don’t know who in the hell he is. Even tho he’s a murderer.

He’s more than that, Mom said. She told me to remember that she’d loved him and he’d loved me.

I told her I would but it was bullshit. I’m not gonna remember that he used to love me. That’s exactly what I’m gonna try to forget.

October was a month of gray days, cool nights, and thready, inconstant rain. The shorter days were busy for Winona as she prepared for the coming election.

From the outside looking in, anyone who was casually watching Winona would surely have seen nothing out of the ordinary. She was at her desk answering phone calls and seeing clients by eight o’clock in the morning. At lunch, more often than not, she could be found at the diner or at the Waves, treating some influential town citizen to a working lunch. After work, as the darkness fell, she tended to sit in her bed, watching her reality TV shows and mailing out promotional items. Her crisp linen envelopes read: Go with a Winner! Vote Winona Grey this November.

All of that, combined with church, the monthly family supper, and her dates with Mark, filled her time. She couldn’t remember when she’d been so busy or so happy. Individually and collectively she loved all of the things that commanded her time and attention. She and Mark had finally gone public with their romance in late September, and since then everyone seemed certain that it was only a matter of time before a wedding took place. Even Winona was beginning to hope. They weren’t head over heels in love, it was true, but she was old enough to recognize the reality of life. Besides, she’d truly loved a man already in her life, and look at the mistakes she’d made in the name of that unreliable emotion. It was better to play it safe. Thinking this, she often found herself at the magazine aisle in King’s Market, flipping through the latest Brides magazine.

The only fly in this beautiful, intricate web was Dallas.

It stuck in her craw that he wouldn’t see her, wouldn’t even listen to her. Both Vivi Ann and Noah had dropped the whole thing when Winona told them of Dallas’s reaction. Vivi Ann had sighed and said sadly, “That’s that, then.” Even Noah had accepted it, muttering thanks as he walked away.

But Winona couldn’t let it go. She went to the prison once a week—always on Saturday. Hour after empty hour, she sat in that molded plastic chair in front of the dirty Plexiglas. Week after week, Dallas didn’t show.

Each time she left the prison, Winona berated herself for her poor judgment and vowed not to return, and every week she broke that promise.

She couldn’t pinpoint the source of her obsession. Perhaps it was the mysterious tattoo (surely Vivi Ann was mistaken and it was on his right bicep; nothing else seemed truly possible), or the way Noah had smiled when she agreed to take this ridiculous case, or the way Dallas had asked about Vivi Ann and his son. Or maybe it was what Vivi Ann hadn’t said and should have: I asked you to help him twelve years ago.

Whatever it was, she knew that she couldn’t let go of this until he gave her an answer. That was all she needed, just a simple, No way, Win. A DNA test doesn’t make much sense to me. You know why.

She’d imagined that exact answer from him so many times that sometimes she woke up from a restless night thinking he’d actually said it to her.

“Okay,” she said aloud, “it’s time to do something else.” She glanced at the clock. It was 4:20 on Thursday afternoon. Mark would be here in ninety minutes to take her out to dinner and to a movie. She got out a piece of her special Winona Elizabeth Grey, Esquire, stationery. Beneath her imprinted name, she began to write.

Dear Dallas:

You win. I have no doubt that you could continue this little game of ours forever. Surely you cannot believe that I would attempt to see you again after all these years on a lark. Obviously I have business of a serious nature to discuss with you. That being said, I will only put forth so much effort. You are—as you no doubt intend—making me feel like a fool. It is in both of our interests—and certainly your son’s as well—that you accept my invitation to talk. I will be there Wednesday during the 4–6 visiting hours for your cell block. It will be my final attempt to see or speak to you.

Sincerely,

Winona Grey

She folded up the letter, sealed it in an envelope, stamped it, and carried it immediately out to the blue mail drop on the corner.

She was done now. It was in Dallas’s hands.

On Wednesday, Winona carefully packed up her desk, put everything away, and went out to tell Lisa that she’d be gone for the rest of the day. “If anyone calls, I’m in a meeting. Take a message and I’ll call back first thing in the morning. And before you leave tonight, will you water the plants in the sunroom? They’re looking a little wilted.”

“Sure.”

Winona went to her car and drove out of town.

It lightened something in her, this thought that it would finally end today. She had just recently realized how much Noah’s request had been weighing her down. Now, though, she would be out from under its pressure. Whatever sin she may have committed by omission at the first trial, she’d atoned for it in the past six weeks. Six times—seven, including today—she’d driven to the prison, waited for a man who never showed, and gone home. Each sojourn took up at least six hours of her time.

By now she knew many of the faces along the way and she smiled and made small talk as she checked in. It had all become so routine that when the officer handed her her name tag and said, “A private meeting, huh? That’s new,” she was too shocked to answer.

“Here you go. This is one of the lawyers’ visiting rooms.”

Winona nodded and went inside. It was a small room, with a big, scarred wooden table and several chairs scattered about. The walls were an ugly brown; the paint was worn through to show the concrete beneath. A uniformed guard stood in the corner, staring straight ahead, his hands clasped behind his back. Under his watchful eye, she took a seat at the table.

The door opened and Dallas hobbled in, his wrists and ankles shackled, his head bowed forward as he moved.

He sat down across from her, thumping his shackled wrists on the table between them. “What does my son want?”

She heard the way his voice caught on the word son. “I’d like to ask you a few questions. May I?”

“Like anyone could ever shut you up.”

She bristled at that, remembering in a rush how much she’d once disliked this man. Now that she was with him, she just wanted to be gone. “What arm is your tattoo on?”

He looked surprised by that. “My left. Why?”

Winona cursed under her breath. “Did Roy have an investigator, someone to go to places, check them out; you know, dig deep?”

“There was no money, you know that. He did the best he could.”

“Why didn’t you testify?”

“Jesus, Win. This is old news. I didn’t testify because of my criminal record.”

“People wanted to hear your side of it.”

“No, they didn’t.”

“Your son wants me to get your permission to run a new DNA test on the sample left at the crime scene. The technology is better these days. The sample may be large enough to exonerate you.”

“You think I’m innocent suddenly?”

“I think this test would give us the answer once and for all.”

“No.”

“Am I to assume you don’t want the test for obvious reasons?”

“Assume what you want. You were always good at that.”

Winona leaned forward.

“I read the transcripts, Dallas. Myrtle Michaelian saw you coming out of the alley. You stepped into the light from a streetlamp and she saw your profile and your tattoo.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But the tattoo she saw had to be on the man’s right arm. He was walking away from her.”

“Yeah. So?”

“You aren’t even surprised. Why not?”

He stared at her, saying nothing.

The answer to her question washed over her like an icy breeze. “You aren’t surprised because you weren’t there that night. You always knew Myrtle saw someone else.”

“Go home, Winona. You’re closing the barn door years too late.”

“Are you telling me you didn’t do it?” Winona felt sick at the thought.

“Go away, Winona.”

For the first time she saw it in his gray eyes, the pain she was causing him. “Why did you stop seeing Vivi Ann?”

He pushed back in his chair and glanced over at the door. “Did you ever see her when she brought home one of those abused horses?”

“Of course.”

“That was how she started to look when she came to see me. I knew she wasn’t sleeping, wasn’t eating. Believing in me was killing her, and I knew she’d never let go.”

“So you made the choice for her.” Winona sat back in her seat, stunned. It was like suddenly seeing one of those images hidden in a kaleidoscope of shapes. Once you saw it, you wonder how you could have missed it. He’d divorced Vivi Ann because he loved her.

“I didn’t say that. You did. What I said was, ‘Go away.’ None of this matters now. Vivi Ann’s gone on with her life and Noah will, too. It’s best if we just leave them alone.”

“You think Vivi’s gone on?” she said, staring at him.

In his gaze she saw a yearning that was like nothing she’d ever seen in her life. “Hasn’t she?”

“She hasn’t rescued a horse since the day she got the divorce papers. I guess all that took a kind of optimism she doesn’t have anymore. In fact, she’s like one of those horses now; when you look her in the eye, all you see is emptiness.”

Dallas closed his eyes slowly. “No DNA test will save me, Win. Say the test comes back negative. They’ll just claim I didn’t have sex with Cat before I killed her.”

“But there’s a chance. It’s not a slam dunk, you’re right—other facts convicted you—but I’m sure it will get you a retrial.”

He looked at her, and it was terrible, the despair she saw in his gray eyes. “And my son wants this.”

“He needs you, Dallas. You can imagine what they say about him. Butchie and Erik’s kids taunt him all the time. And he has your temper.”

Dallas got up and hobbled around, pacing along the table, chains clattering on the floor. “It’s dangerous to do this,” he said.

“Not if you’re innocent.”

He laughed at that.

She went to him, came up behind him. She would have touched his shoulder, but the guard was eyeing them suspiciously. “Trust me, Dallas.”

He turned. “Trust you? You must be kidding.”

“I misjudged you. I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t about you misjudging me, Win. You were so jealous of Vivi Ann it made you blind.”

She swallowed hard, knowing that accusation would stay with her for a long time. “Yes,” she said. “Maybe that’s why I’m here now. As atonement.”

That seemed to surprise him. “I don’t want to hurt her, or Noah.”

“I don’t know about love or damage or hurting, Dallas, but I do know that it’s time for the truth.”

It was a long time before he said, “Okay,” and even then, when he’d agreed, he looked unhappy, and she knew why. He knew this legal system—and love—better than she did, and he knew the price they all could end up paying for the hubris of hope.